What Really Happens When You Sleep in Your Makeup?

It’s Saturday night and you’re crawling through the door after a night with the girls, way too exhausted to do anything but crash. Or maybe it’s a Wednesday night, and you’re halfway through your crazy work week, just finished putting the kids to bed, and you’re counting the minutes until Friday. The last thing you want to do is go through a fullskin care routine. Is it really bad to go to sleep with makeup on? What could actually go wrong?

Truth be told, while one night probably won’t mess things up too bad, there are a number of nasty repercussions that your skin faces when you don’t remove your makeup before bed on a regular basis.

Here are the top 3 things we warn our clients about:

PREMATURE AGING

Throughout the day, your skin is exposed to pollutants, smoke, and extremely toxic free radicals. This type of environmental damage is the top cause for premature aging in the skin. Now, let’s add makeup to the mix. While wearing makeup during the day won’t ruin your skin, when you sleep with it on, all these pollutants and free radicals that have accumulated during the day stay on the skin and continue to wreak havoc. Free radicals are responsible for the breakdown of collagen and will lead the skin to produce fine lines and wrinkles prematurely. Keeping your skin looking young and healthy is reason enough to wash that makeup off before bed.

BLACKHEADS AND BREAKOUTS

When you don’t remove your makeup, you allow it to absorb into your pores. Not only can this stretch the pores, forcing them to look bigger, but the buildup within the pores of makeup, dirt, oil, and the pollutants mentioned above will begin to cause blackheads and breakouts. Even if you don’t usually experience breakouts, skipping the evening wash can change that very quickly.

DRY, DULL SKIN SKIN

The skin’s job is to renew itself at night. While you sleep, your skin cells are working hard to turn over. A fast cellular turnover means younger, healthier looking skin. Your skin needs to be properly cleansed and moisturized to create the best environment for this process. When you leave your makeup on throughout the night, your skin doesn’t have the same ability to repair itself and will eventually cause it to dry out. Not to mention, many makeup products contain irritants, like perfumes or dyes, that when left on the skin can lead to inflammation and rashes.